MSI MEG X570 UNIFY Motherboard ATX - Supports AMD Ryzen 2nd and 3rd Gen Processors, AM4, DDR4 Boost (4600MHz/OC), 3 x PCIe 4.0 x16, 3 x M.2 Gen4, 2.5G LAN, Wi-Fi 6

I bought this after my ASUS B350 was ‘bricked’ while attempting a BIOS update using EZ BIOS. I am not a gamer so I was looking for a stable workstation motherboard and chose this X470 as it has a better cooled and robust Voltage Regulator Module VRM than the B450 and more sockets including a S/PDIF out.From the reviews, it is a good MB for the price and it will overclock so I assume it is good for gaming. However, for a workstation using applications, it was the conclusion by thefpsreview.com. “The X470 is a great board, but it’s largely standard fare for the segment. The only area where it stands out is reliability. The thing just worked.” That was the deciding factor.I just put it in the case connected everything up it booted into the BIOS I selected the default settings and away it went. What I immediately noticed was the silence as the fan only runs at a speed that is needed to keep the CPU cool. The other thing I noticed as the improvement in sound quality even from cheap 5w speakers.Warning! If you want to register the product then you will need the CHK number and it's on the side of the main power plug. If you do not have a small inspection mirror you may have to take it out again to read it.What also annoyed me was the setup CD is useless as it opens in a dialog box too small to be able to load the drivers and utilities. However, these are all available from the MSI website and you need the Dragon Center download. It has many options for gaming that are also useful for memory-hungry photo imaging software.The BIOS updated easily using Live Update within the Dragon Center control panel. As I run the MB cool and slow for stability the only BIOS change I have made was in advanced mode, settings, advanced, wake up event setup, resume by USB so I could wake it up with my mouse or keyboard. Basics like this are not in the manual which concentrates on overclocking.Update: I have used this for most of the day for well over a year, it is incredibly stable and never had a BSOD Blue Screen of Death. As I usually send it to sleep instead of switching off for a faster boot up I need to close and restart Firefox otherwise even with 32GB it soaks up all available memory and grinds to a halt

Still works perfect 3 years on

I was going to go for the b450 board but I ended up buying this for my build instead, and I didn't encounter any issues at all apart from having to remove the cpu cooler brackets, which was easy. It seems fairly well made and I was able to read the manual and figure out where all the cables go easily.I put a new ryzen 5 3600 and 2x8gb sticks of ddr4 ram in, plugged in my old psu, hdd and rx580 and it booted first time. Windows installed all the new drivers automatically and I was up and running. The bios is simple to navigate and didn't need updating for me.Just ordered an rgb light strip to try out with the rgb software it has, and it supports 2 m.2 ssds too which I'll try when I can afford one. Just a random noteif you do buy it, apparently it's normal to have a constant red light above each stick of ram with this motherboard, i thought there was an issue but they are apparently just to indicate the slots are occupied.

***The first one of these I bought I had to return as it was completely dead - no EZ Debug light came on or anything even with just CPU and RAM, so i had to return it. The second unit i was shipped works completely fine. For this reason alone i have knocked off a star but i think this is a solid motherboard with most features you would want as per the review below.***It has a tonne of features for the relatively cheap price point, including reinforced steel PCI-E slots (not gen4 but it wouldn't be this inexpensive if it did have these), 2x M.2 slots, multiple USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports and a lot of RAM compatibility (up to 4133mhz overclocked). I managed to OC my 3000mhz corsair RAM to 3200mhz and it has ran stably for the past year or so. Paired with my Ryzen 5 3600x this motherboard is overall very stable and runs very well, i do not suffer with BSODs or crashed very often.My board did come with a very old BIOS version (from 2019, one of the very new Ryzen 5 compatible ones) so i would recommend flashing the BIOS if like me your version was super old. The old BIOS had a bug wherein if Chrome or simple other programs were open, the CPU fan would ramp up - this was very loud with the stock cooler and very annoying. However, flashing a new 2021 BIOS has since fixed this issue.The BIOS itself has a tonne of overclocking settings for CPU and RAM. It also has a handy smart fan mode which attempts to keep your case fans running as quiet as possible (i did change the fan curve slightly) which has proven useful and will prove useful for new PC builders.Temps on this board are also solid, the chipset doesn't get stupidly hot and the CPU fan curves handle my 3600x just fine, keeping it around 50-55 degrees when gaming.I have had one issue recently, where the PC turned off in windows, attempted to restart and then failed to. The PC then launched with a screen that said something along the lies of "XMP profile failure, PC will boot into stock settings". I never fully figured out what the issue was, however taking the RAM out and reverting back to the advertised speed on the memory worked for me.Another drawback from a future-proofing perspective is that it does not have a USB-C header on it, meaning now in my fractal meshify 2c i have a front USB-C header that doesn't work.Overall though, this is a solid and budget-conscious product from MSI with most features you would want from a motherboard.